Where Smoothies, Salads, and Silliness Reign Supreme and Mediocre Food Photography is Celebrated!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

A Soup and Salad Kind of Day

Today was rainy and humid here in RI, so it seemed like a perfect day for soup and salad. Fortunately, that's what my menu plan had called for anyway :) See, this is why I check the forecast when I'm making my menus for the week!!

Let's begin with the soup. The soup (which I had for lunch today) was actually leftover soup from last night's dinner. It was the Delhi Express Soup from The Complete Book of Raw Food. This is a thick, rich, and super-healthy soup chock full of veggies. It requires a few different steps to make, but all in all, it's worth the effort because it is so delicious! My hubby and my toddler son love the soup too, so we had happy bellies all around :)

First, to make the soup, I had to juice some carrots, celery, beet, and apple in my juicer. This juice provides the liquid base for the soup, as opposed to water or broth. The beet gives the juice a beautiful rosy color. Then I pour the juice into my Vita-Mix and add chopped bell pepper, two avocados, garlic, curry powder, and salt. The soup gets pureed until it is super creamy and slightly warm.

I chopped up some veggies to garnish the soup. Here's some diced avocado, tomato, scallions, cilantro, and cucumber:

And here is the soup, garnished and ready to be devoured (along with salad, not pictured):

I am such a big fan of raw soups. I love how you can puree and blend so many veggies into them and literally get a day's worth of veggies in one serving. Plus, they taste awesome!! I am always so thrilled when my son likes a raw soup recipe because I know he is getting so many vitamins, minerals, fiber, and nutrients in one serving. I also think it's helping him to develop a palate for all different kinds of veggies and seasonings, which of course, makes his vegan mama happy :)

As good and filling as this dinner was, I was still feeling hungry and snacky last night so I had some more wasabi peas AND some Kashi cereal AND some air-popped popcorn, sprinkled liberally with sea salt and chili powder. I love salty, crunchy snacks at night!

This morning, after my run, I had a Chocolate Ginger smoothie for breakfast. A couple of hours later, I headed to my weekly mother's group and brought along a new drink to sip on, a mango-coconut KeVita. I saw this at Whole Foods last week and decided to pick one up and see how it compares to my beloved Kombucha. Well, no offense KeVita folks, but it's no competition. Kombucha still rocks my socks!

After we got home, I had my leftover soup and salad for lunch. My son was in the mood for something different and said he wanted applesauce and yogurt. I stirred in some carrot juice, wheat germ, ground flaxseed, and hemp seed oil before I gave it to him, 'cuz I'm sneaky like that :) He's so accustomed to having everything doctored up so it doesn't phase him one bit. He's a champ!

I laid down with him after lunch because he loves to snuggle before his nap. I must have been really tired though because I fell asleep right next to him! LOL I've never been a napper before at all, but I think this is becoming a habit!

After our naps, I decided to make my son some "Blueberry Juice" in the Vita-Mix:

I blend up some frozen blueberries, banana, soymilk, coconut milk, baby spinach, a spoonful of almond butter, and a drizzle of hemp seed oil. Delicious and nutritious! It was rather late in the afternoon, so I forgoed my usual afternoon smoothie in favor of an asian pear and a gala apple. I sliced them both up and shared them with my son, who loves fruit like nobody's business.

Tonight's dinner was a main-dish salad from one of my favorite cookbooks, Appetite for Reduction, Caesar Salad with Eggplant Bacon. Mmmmm.....bacon! Hee hee. I actually made the dressing this morning before I went to my mom's group, so throwing the salad together was a snap.

First, I sliced up the eggplant...

Then I washed and chopped my romaine lettuce and tossed it with the dressing:

After baking the eggplant slices for 11 minutes, the slices are dipped in a tamari-liquid smoke mixture:

...and then baked again for 3 more minutes to get crispy. Well, they were supposed to get crispy, but mine stayed kind of soft.

No matter, they were still awesomely delicious!

I added a can of chickpeas to the salad to boost the protein factor, then I topped it with the eggplant bacon. My son loves sugar snap peas, so I cooked some up to fill out the meal:

I can't believe how awesome this tasted...and how easy it was to prepare. My hubby and son loved it, too, yay!

Alright, I'm off to veg out and probably eat some wasabi peas. Or popcorn. Or maybe both! :)